Gaming & Culture —

Game Review: Gran Turismo HD (PS3)

This free download is one of the best-looking PS3 games on the market. Which …

At E3, Gran Turismo HD was one of the showpieces for the PS3 hardware. As one of the few games running in full 1080p, and with a powerful franchise name attached, it received a lot of attention and some praise. I enjoyed my time with it then, and I thought it looked great on the show floor. Then came the news that the game was going to be shipped empty, with everything from cars to tracks being for-pay downloads. This did not make fans happy. Then came news that Polyphony won't be releasing a retail GT HD at all, but that one track and ten cars will be put on the Sony store as a limited time download for the attractive price of free. I've been playing the "game" for the past day or so, and while it's nearly impossible to "review," a few good points can be made about what we've seen so far.

The game looks great; it grabbed a lot of admiring glances from friends and family during the holidays. Then I put in Gran Turismo 4, and that looked great as well. Gran Turismo HD really is not much more than some Gran Turismo 4 content with a resolution boost. This shouldn't prove to us the power of the PS3 hardware or what Polyphony can do with it; but it does serve as a powerful reminder of the mastery they had over the PS2 architecture, and how much they were able to get out of the console in terms of graphical performance. If this is what a shined-up version of one of their PS2 titles looks like, we have some amazing things to look forward to in Gran Turismo 5.

Which is how we should look at GT HD: this is something that Polyphony worked on for a limited time, and while it didn't end up as a full retail game, it would have been a retread of a past title anyway. This at least gave them some time and practice working on the PS3, and hopefully what they've learned by finishing and releasing this little taste will give them an advantage in Gran Turismo 5 development. They're one of the premier developers in this business, and if there is a game that's sure to show us exactly what the PS3 can do, it will likely be GT5. This gives us a nice teaser of what even a slapped together PS3 Gran Turismo looks like, and while it won't keep you busy for more than a few hours, it's hard to argue with free. It's also still one of the few 1080p PS3 games on the market; if you have a display that can handle that resolution you're in for quite the graphical treat.

This is a nice little Christmas present and, while the experience is slight, it really does get you excited about what you have waiting for you when Gran Turismo 5 launches. Of course, that's going to be quite the wait.

Verdict: Give it a download and play, but this does not come close to what the PS3 is truly capable of